Col Muammar Gaddafi's forces faced the prospect of losing a key lifeline to
the outside world following an uprising in the battered city of Zawiyah.

A rebel spokesman said 13 rebel fighters and civilians, including a seven-year old boy, had died on Saturday in fierce clashes which caused major delays on the main road between Tripoli and the Tunisian border.

The city of 250,000 lies on a transport route which is the regime's lifeline for badly-needed supplies of food and other goods.

A successful uprising in the Libyan city, where all resistance was thought brutally supressed two months ago, could cut off Gaddafi's last dependable link to the outside and hasten its end.

Government officials in the capital, only 30 miles away, at first described the clashes as minor and said a few fighters were simply "making trouble". But rebel sources insisted fighting continued for a second day yesterday.

"The situation is bad, very bad," a rebel spokesman called Ibrahim told the Reuters news agency by telephone yesterday. "Fierce fighting is taking place now. The (pro-Gaddafi) brigades have been receiving reinforcements ... There are many snipers on rooftops of buildings and mosques. They are the main threat to the residents," he said.

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Zawiyah figured prominently in the early days of the uprising, its defenders holding out for weeks before they were overwhelmed by the regime's firepower.

There have been other reports in recent days that the Brother Leader is losing control of territory elsewhere. Rebels are gradually expanding the areas they control around Misurata, a city east of Tripoli, and in the western mountains region south of the capital.

Meanwhile there have also been reports in the past few days of new uprisings elsewhere in the territory he still controls including the southern oasis town of Sabha which had been regarded as a Gaddafi stronghold.

The fresh wave of fighting came as Turkey said it has offered Gaddafi guarantees to leave Libya, and Russian envoy Mikhail Margelov said he would soon visit Tripoli to try to find a solution to the conflict.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, yesterday insisted that Muammar Gaddafi's regime was "weakening all the time" in the face of Nato's military campaign although he admitted that it was impossible to say how long it would take to force him from power.

Mr Hague also said his preference was for Gaddafi to be charged with crimes against humanity, rather than killed in an airstrike or exiled.

"Time is on our side, not on his side. The position of the Gaddafi regime is weakening all the time," he said.